2010年12月31日 星期五

Published: December 30, 2010

SAYAMA, Japan — The Kura “revolving sushi” restaurant chain has no Michelin stars, but it has succeeded where many of Japan’s more celebrated eateries fall short: turning a profit in a punishing economy.

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Hiroko Tabuchi for The New York Times

Kura puts codes on the bottom of its plates to keep track of how long a sushi portion has been circulating on a conveyor belt.

Efficiency is paramount at Kura: absent are the traditional sushi chefs and their painstaking attention to detail. In their place are sushi-making robots and an emphasis on efficiency.

Absent, too, are flocks of waiters. They have been largely replaced by conveyors belts that carry sushi to diners and remote managers who monitor Kura’s 262 restaurants from three control centers across Japan. (“We see gaps of over a meter between your sushi plates — please fix,” a manager said recently by telephone to a Kura restaurant 10 miles away.)

Absent, too, are the exorbitant prices of conventional sushi restaurants. At a Kura, a sushi plate goes for 100 yen, or about $1.22.

Such measures are helping Kura stay afloat even though the country’s once-profligate diners have tightened their belts in response to two decades of little economic growth and stagnant wages.

Many other restaurants and dining businesses in Japan have not fared so well. After peaking at 29.7 trillion yen in 1997, the country’s restaurant sector has shrunk almost every year as a weak economy has driven businesses into price wars — or worse, sent them belly-up. In 2009, restaurant revenue, including from fast-food stores, fell 2.3 percent, to 23.9 trillion yen —20 percent below the peak, according to the Foodservice Industry Research Institute, a research firm in Tokyo.

Bankruptcies have been rampant: in 2009, 674 dining businesses with liabilities of over 10 million yen went under, the highest number in the last five years, according to Teikoku Data Bank, a credit research company.

In November 2009, Soho’s Hospitality, the company behind celebrity restaurants like Nobu and Roy’s, filed for bankruptcy. Roy’s is now run by another company, while Nobu’s chef, Nobu Matsuhisa, has opened a new restaurant elsewhere in Tokyo with Robert De Niro.

Along with other low-cost restaurant chains, Kura has bucked the dining-out slump with low prices and a dogged pursuit of efficiency. In the company’s most recent fiscal year, which ended on Oct. 31, net profit jumped 20 percent from the same period a year earlier, to 2.8 billion yen.

In the last two months alone, Kura has added seven stores.

“If you look at the restaurant business, consumers are still holding back because of employment fears and falling incomes, and there’s no signs that will change,” said Kunihiko Tanaka, Kura’s chief executive, who opened Kura’s first sushi restaurant in 1995. “Amid these worsening conditions, our company feels that consumer sentiment matches, or is even a tail wind” to the Kura business, he told shareholders earlier this year.

The travails of Japan’s restaurant industry, and the changes in Japanese dining habits, may be among most visible manifestations of how Japan’s “bubble economy” excesses in the 1980s have given way to frugal times since the bubble burst in 1990.

With wages weak — average annual private sector pay has fallen 12 percent in the last decade, to 4.05 million yen, or about $49,300, in 2009 — the Japanese now spend less on eating out. An average single-person household spent 163,000 yen on dining in 2009, 27 percent less than in 2000, according to detailed budget surveys compiled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In a survey by Citizen Holdings, the watchmaker, of 400 men in their 20s to 50s, the average time spent at cafes and restaurants plunged from 7 hours and 52 minutes a week in 1990 to 2 hours and 25 minutes in 2010.

An aging population is also depressing restaurant sales. More than one-fifth of Japan’s population is already over 65, and surveys indicate that older people tend to eat out less. The population is also shrinking, reducing the restaurants’ potential customer base.

Meanwhile, Japanese companies have cut back sharply on their entertainment expenses, further hurting restaurant sales. Total corporate spending on dining and entertainment has halved from a peak of 9.5 trillion yen in 1991 to 4.8 trillion yen in 2008, according to data from the National Tax Agency.

“The restaurant industry here is so linked to the state of the economy, and that’s why we’re seeing this decline,” said Munenori Hotta, a food service industry expert at Miyagi University in Japan. “In this climate, even top restaurants are having to moderate their prices to keep attracting customers,” he said.

Japan’s dining-out boom had its roots in the 1970s and 1980s, as incomes grew and rural populations flocked to big cities. So-called family restaurants brought cheap, Western-style food to the masses flourished in that era. So did American fast-food chains, which were considered novel at the time. Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its first restaurant here in 1970, followed by McDonald’s in 1971.

At the other end of the price range, a new generation of wealthy Japanese savored imported French wines at lavish restaurants. By 1986, there were 503,088 restaurants across Japan, according to records from the Internal Affairs Ministry. That was nearly double the number from 15 years earlier — and was more restaurants than now operate in the United States, which has more than twice the population of Japan.

After the bubble burst in 1990, new low-cost restaurant chains that offered pizzas for as little as 400 yen, or $4.86, started to spread across Japan, and restaurateurs spoke with alarm of ready-made, convenience-store meals that were siphoning off sales.

In the depths of the slump, in 1995, Mr. Tanaka started a company based on serving quality sushi on the cheap.

His idea of using conveyor belts to offer diners a steady stream of sushi on small plates was not a new one; an Osaka-based entrepreneur invented such a system in the late 1950s. But Mr. Tanaka set out to undercut his rivals with deft automation, an investment in information technology, some creativity and an almost extreme devotion to cost-efficiency. In Japan, where labor costs are high, that meant running his restaurants with as few workers as possible.

Instead of placing supervisors at each restaurant, Kura set up central control centers with video links to the stores. At these centers, a small group of managers watch for everything from wayward tuna slices to outdated posters on restaurant walls.

Each Kura store is also highly automated. Diners use a touch panel to order soup and other side dishes, which are delivered to tables on special express conveyor belts. In the kitchen, a robot busily makes the rice morsels for a server to top with cuts of fish that have been shipped from a central processing plant, where workers are trained to slice tuna and mackerel accurately down to the gram.

Diners are asked to slide finished plates into a tableside bay, where they are automatically counted to calculate the bill, doused in cleaning fluid and flushed back to the kitchen on a stream of water. Matrix codes on the backs of plates keep track of how long a sushi portion has been circulating on conveyor belts; a small robotic arm disposes of any that have been out too long.

Kura spends 10 million yen to fit each new restaurant with the latest automation systems, an investment it says pays off in labor cost savings. In all, just six servers and a minimal kitchen staff can service a restaurant seating 196 people, said a company spokesman, Takeshi Hattori.

“Its not just about efficiency,” Mr. Hattori said. “Diners love it too. For example, women say they like clearing finished plates right away, so others can’t see how much they’ve eaten.”

Traditional sushi chefs have not fared so well, however. While the overall market for belt-conveyor sushi restaurants jumped 42 percent, to 428 billion yen, in 2009 compared with 2003, higher-end sushi restaurants are on the decline, according to Fuji-Keizai, a market research firm.

“It’s such a bargain at 100 yen,” said Toshiyuki Arai, a delivery company worker dining at a Kura restaurant with his sister and her 3-year-old son. “A real sushi restaurant?” he said. “I hardly go anymore.”

Some of the world's biggest companies, including GE and GM, are taking a risky but potentially rewarding step in China—folding pieces of their world-wide operations into partnerships with Chinese firms to do business around the globe.

China Clamps Down on Skype Chinese regulators are clamping down on Internet phone services that aren't provided by the country's two state-owned telecoms, a move that could make services like Skype unavailable.----

Japan Electronics Giants Up Reform Pace

BY JAMES SIMMS

When it comes to restructuring, this is about as energized as Japan's lethargic electronics leviathans can get.

In the past few days, several have taken—or talked about taking—steps to concentrate their operations on core competencies. Some of these moves are small but nevertheless welcome: sprawling businesses and thin margins have made Japan's manufacturers vulnerable to demand shocks and competition from nimbler rivals in South Korea.

Toshiba said it's selling to Sony a factory that makes large-scale integration chips which serve as the brain ...

Beijing helps yuan creep up in global status

The yen mark stands for the Chinese currency on this signboard advertising yuan-denominated financial products in Hong Kong. (Keiko Yoshioka)

Although the Chinese yuan is criticized as being artificially undervalued, its status and influence have certainly appreciated in terms of trade settlements and overseas projects.

Like the Japanese yen in the early 1970s, the yuan, also called the renminbi, is slowly but surely coming of age.

Although the Chinese currency is unlikely to become a global standard anytime soon, its increased use in trade transactions could undermine the current power of the yen, eating away profits of Japanese financial institutions and affecting investments in Japan, watchers say.

Beijing continues to strictly regulate trading of the yuan. But the rising power is easing other restrictions to transform the yuan into a currency that is convenient for settling transactions by Chinese companies, which are increasingly entering overseas markets.

The Chinese government fears than an overreliance on the U.S. dollar poses a risk, because if the U.S. economy falters, the greenback could plummet and devastate China's foreign currency reserves.

Following the Asian currency crisis in the late 1990s, Beijing kept a tight rein on any attempts to liberalize the yuan, fearing drastic fluctuations in deposits or withdrawals.

But after the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in autumn 2008, Chinese officials started expressing concerns about the dangers of holding on to dollars.

In July 2009, China lifted a ban on using the yuan for trade settlements between five Chinese cities, including Shanghai, as well as Hong Kong, Macao and the 10 ASEAN countries.

Beijing has since further eased the restrictions.

The volume of transactions settled in yuan still account for only a small fraction of total settlements. But Lian Ping, chief economist at the Bank of Communications, said, "The proportion should reach around 10 percent in three to five years."

Since the summer, the Shanghai currency exchange added the Malaysian ringgit and Russian ruble to the list of currencies with which the yuan can be directly traded. The list already included the U.S. dollar, the yen, the euro, the pound and the Hong Kong dollar.

The increased direct trading of the yuan with a variety of currencies will enable Chinese businesses to avert risks brought about by exchange rate fluctuations and reduce transaction costs.

Beijing is reportedly considering adding the Brazilian real to the list.

China's rising influence on the global stage has also pumped up the yuan's status, as shown by the growth of yuan-denominated loans that Beijing is extending to developing countries.

Projects covered by the yuan loans, namely railroad, dam and highway construction projects, will involve Chinese businesses and the settlement of large numbers of Chinese near the sites. Sprawling economic zones where the yuan is used will be created as hotels and merchants start accepting the Chinese currency.

"The age when the yuan was only used in transactions in border areas (with China) has become a thing of the past," said Hiroshi Mogi, of Mitsubishi Corp. (Hong Kong) Ltd. "As more Chinese businesses go overseas, the areas where the yuan can be used will expand."

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also declared recently that "China intends to gain a voice in international organizations that is on par with its economic power."

As a contributor to the International Monetary Fund, China rose from sixth to third last fall, and is closing in on second-ranked Japan.

Until now, most key posts at Asian organizations have been reserved for Japanese.

"China does not have the kind of human talent capable of controlling international finance," a senior Japanese Finance Ministry official said.

Beijing obviously disagrees.

A rift has emerged among officials of ASEAN Plus 3 (Japan, China and South Korea) over who should head a Singapore-based economic research office.

Japan has been pushing for the appointment of a well-connected person who is also well versed in economic cooperation in the Asian region. Beijing has insisted on a former senior official from the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, who has also worked at the IMF.

China's push is seen as an attempt to help raise the international profile of the yuan.

But many experts play down Beijing's intentions.

"The renminbi is still subject to many restrictions, and it certainly is not yet in a position to replace the dollar," said Yu Yongding, who teaches at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Yu said the Chinese government simply decided to end its overdependence on the dollar, which is subject to fluctuations stemming from U.S. policy.

Jin Canrong, who teaches at the Renmin University of China, said that rather than strive for a single Asian currency, "it is more realistic to push for the internationalization of the yuan."

Beijing also has ambitions to bolster Shanghai into a global financial market in the same club as New York and London.

"The Chinese government is slowly easing regulations using Hong Kong as a testing ground," said Eiichi Sekine of the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research.

Whatever China's intentions, the rising standing of the yuan will have an impact not only on the yen, but also the Japanese economy.

Experts say reduced trading of the yen would deal a major blow to the revenues of financial institutions and dampen investment in Japanese stocks and bonds.

Tokyo aggressively raised the yen's status in international markets in the 1980s and 1990s. After the government completely deregulated capital trading in 1998, the process became complete.

"It was our predecessors' ambitions to see the yen claim the dominant position in the Asian market, just as the dollar dominated the Western Hemisphere," said Hiroshi Watanabe, president of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and a former vice finance minister for international affairs.

However, since 2000, Tokyo has shifted its policy.

"We have taken all measures that are necessary by eliminating regulations. Circulation of currencies should be left up to demand in the market," said a senior Finance Ministry official.

Partly due to this stance, cross-border trade settlements in yen have remained unchanged over the last 20 years, accounting for about 40 percent of exports from Japan and 20 percent of imports.

In April, the yen ranked third, following the U.S. dollar and the euro, as the preferred currency for foreign exchange trading. But in June, it accounted for only 3 percent of foreign currency reserves around the world.

While this has prompted some old-timers from the Finance Ministry to suggest increasing the use of the yen in settlements by Japanese companies going abroad, one current ministry official scoffed at such concerns.

"It is still premature to hold discussions about the yuan defeating the yen," the official said.

Will Taiwan DRAM makers survive in '11?

Mark LaPedus

12/31/2010 5:50 PM EST

Taiwan's DRAM makers survived the last downturn. This time around, the island's vendors may run out of luck.

Taiwan's Nanya Technology Corp. will survive, because that it has a parent with deep pockets. But still, Nanya continues to lose money.

Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. and ProMOS Technologies Inc. are simply in trouble. Both vendors lack the capital and technology to keep up with their rivals in South Korea.

The signs are bad for Powerchip. For example, DRAM maker Rexchip Electronics Corp. has suspended product shipments to Powerchip, because it can't pay its bills and is strapped for cash, according to Bloomberg.

Taiwan-based Rexchip was established in 2006, as a 300-mm DRAM manufacturing joint venture between Taiwan's Powerchip and Japan's Elpida Memory Inc. At one time, Rexchip was a 50:50 venture between the firms.

In recent times, Elpida gained control of Rexchip. Elpida has a 69 percent stake in Rexchip. Still, Powerchip gets 31 percent of the output at Rexchip.

Rumors have re-surfaced that Elpida may buy Powerchip and ProMOS. An attempt to weld several small Taiwanese DRAM makers together into a single entity using government money fell apart earlier this year. Taiwan Innovation Memory Co., having been rejected as a suitable case for government investment as a DRAM company, is trying to reinvent itself as a NAND flash supplier.

This has left Powerchip, ProMOS. and Winbond Electronics Corp. as being essentially too small to keep up in the capital intensive DRAM business and among possible targets for Elpida.

Elpida (Tokyo, Japan) is looking to buy stakes of 20 percent to 30 percent and deals may lead to takeovers, although no negotiations are under way, according to reports.

Airbus began as a consortium of aerospace manufacturers. Consolidation of European defence and aerospace companies around the turn of the 21st century allowed the establishment of a simplified joint-stock company in 2001, owned by EADS (80%) and BAE Systems (20%). After a protracted sales process BAE sold its shareholding to EADS on 13 October 2006.[5]

Going Green' with CNN

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In just six months' time, the world will be watching as several thousand delegates descend on Copenhagen for the most important climate change talks since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Japan in 1997.

Much is at stake. What is agreed at the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change starting December 7 will determine how far individual countries are prepared to go to curtail their carbon emissions when the Kyoto agreement expires at the end of 2012.

Industrialized countries are being asked to give firm numbers for measurable reductions. And then there's the question of developing countries. What are they prepared to do to combat climate change? How much is the developed world willing to help them? How will new technologies and adaptation be financed?

JAL workers to sue over dismissals

A group of more than 100 pilots and flight attendants of Japan Airlines Corp. will sue their employer next month demanding that their dismissals be nullified.

Their unions are organizing the action as the carrier under rehabilitation announced Tuesday it will dismiss about 170 workers in the two job categories on Friday.

JAL has given advance notices of termination to about 200 workers, of whom only 30 agreed to voluntarily retire.

The airline said it will let go about 80 pilots and 60 flight attendants as well as 30 others who are currently on leave as part of JAL's efforts to restructure itself.

"It's a measure to optimize the work force to meet our curtailed operations. It was a gut-wrenching decision," JAL President Masaru Onishi told a news conference.

As part of its court-managed rehabilitation, the JAL group is set to dismiss 16,000 workers by the end of March.

The carrier sought voluntary retirement of 1,500 workers, but failed to reach the targets for pilots and crew members. It began a dismissal procedure on Dec. 9.

JAL's Cabin Crew Union (CCU) and the JAL Flight Crew Union, to which most workers facing the ax belong, have argued that the dismissals are invalid.

They said the number of those who accepted voluntary retirement, including those on leave, has already surpassed the reduction target in the JAL group. They also said the company unfairly targeted employees based on age and history of illness.

The unions say most of those to be dismissed will eventually join the group suit, which will be filed with the Tokyo District Court in mid-January.

"We have distrust in the management that went ahead with dismissals without fulfilling all the requirements," CCU leader Taeko Uchida said. "But we still think there are ways to avoid (dismissals) through a management decision. Labor-management negotiations should continue."

A worker at the Jinyuan Company’s smelting workshop stirred cauldrons of the rare earth metal Lanthanum before pouring it into molds near the town of Damao, in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Published: December 28, 2010

HONG KONG — China’s commerce ministry announced on Tuesday in Beijing a steep reduction in export quotas for rare earth metals in the first months of next year, a move that threatens to cause further difficulties for manufacturers already struggling with short supplies and soaring prices.

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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The reduction in quotas for the early months of 2011 — a 35 percent drop in tonnage from the first half of this year — is the latest in a series of measures by Beijing that has gradually curtailed much of the world’s supply of rare earths.

China mines more than 95 percent of the global supply of the metals, which are essential for smartphones, electric cars, many computer components and a range of military hardware. In addition, the country mines 99 percent of the least common rare earths, the so-called heavy rare earths that are used in trace amounts but are crucial to many clean energy applications and electronics.

In what seemed to be an effort to reassure traders and users of rare earths, the commerce ministry said in a follow-up statement late Tuesday on its Web site that it had not decided what the total export quotas would be for all of 2011. The ministry typically issues a second, supplementary batch of quotas each summer.

The ministry said on Tuesday night that companies should not make guesses about the total export quotas for next year based on the initial reductions issued earlier in the day.

“We will be considering the production of rare earths in China, domestic demand and sustainable development needs to determine” the full quotas for the entire year, the ministry Web site quoted its foreign trade department director as saying, without naming the director.

Earlier this month, China’s finance ministry raised export taxes to 25 percent from 15 percent for some of the most crucial rare earths. The ministry also extended taxes to exports of some rare earth alloys that previously were not taxed.

China gradually reduced its annual tonnage of export quotas from 2006 to 2009, then cut the tonnage of allowed exports by more than half in the second half of 2010.

Separately, the Chinese government imposed an unannounced embargo on shipments of raw rare earth minerals to Japan from mid-September to late November, a ban that started during a territorial disagreement over disputed islands.

In addition, rule changes for export quotas have had the effect of reducing the availability of supplies leaving China. Until now, the quotas mostly covered alloys and oxides with a rare earth content of at least 50 percent.

Starting next year, industry executives said, exports of some additional alloys will face restrictions as well, which will have the effect of tightening quotas by about 6 percent.

The commerce ministry provided no reasons for its reduction in initial export quotas for next year, and a ministry spokesman declined to elaborate. White House trade officials have begun an investigation into whether China’s export restrictions violate World Trade Organization rules; the W.T.O. prohibits export quotas and export tariffs except for environmental protection and national security.

China’s latest restrictions drew a quick response from the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington.

“We are very concerned about China’s export restraints on rare earth minerals,” a spokeswoman for the office, Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, said. “We have raised our concerns with China and we are continuing to work closely on the issue with stakeholders.”

Business leaders and officials in Europe have also raised the alarm, especially in Germany, where a large manufacturing sector relies heavily on imports of Chinese rare earths.

Until a few months ago, Chinese officials said that their rare earth policies were aimed at forcing foreign industries to move high-tech factories to China so as to have access to Chinese rare earths. But as trade frictions have increased, they have given greater emphasis to environmental concerns.

A Chinese official said on Tuesday that pollution worries about rare earth mining were sincere.

“The government is paying more attention to environmental protection, and is retiring older facilities and older technologies,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because of the political implications of rare earth policies, and declined to discuss specifics of the quotas.

Dudley Kingsnorth, a longtime rare earth industry executive and consultant in Perth, Australia, said China’s long series of restrictions, together with uncertainty about Chinese policies, were making it increasingly likely that mines would be opened in the next three years in other countries.

“It’s only a matter of time before China is not the major supplier to the rest of the world,” he said, while adding that there might be supply problems before the other mines can open.

Japanese companies account for half the world’s consumption outside China and have some stockpiles, but have kept secret the size of these stockpiles.

Toshiyuki Shiga, the chief operating officer of Nissan Motor, said at a news conference on Dec. 20 at the Guangzhou auto show in China that his company had weathered the Chinese export halt this autumn with stockpiles held by Nissan’s suppliers. But he warned that any further Chinese export restrictions would create problems.

“If this continues, it becomes a big issue for all of the Japanese auto manufacturers, and not just auto manufacturers, but electronics manufacturers and others,” Mr. Shiga said.

The commerce ministry said on its Web site on Tuesday that it had awarded export quotas totaling 14,446 tons to 31 Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.

A year ago, the ministry had awarded 16,304 tons of export quotas to 22 Chinese-owned companies and 5,978 tons of quotas to 10 foreign-owned companies, for a total of 22,282 tons.

The Chinese commerce ministry denied earlier this month that it would reduce export quotas in 2011. Mr. Kingsnorth said that it was still theoretically possible for this to be true, if the government sharply increased its quota allocations for the second half of 2011 to offset the steep drop in quotas allocated at the start of the year.

The ministry typically makes a large allocation of quotas in December that can be used at any time in the following year, and then a supplemental allocation of quotas the following summer. In July of this year, the ministry made a supplemental allocation of 7,976 tons to Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.

World consumption outside China totals about 55,000 tons of rare earth minerals a year, and is rising about 7 percent a year, with increases at twice that pace for the particularly high-price minerals needed for clean energy. Annual production outside China is around 7,000 tons but poised to rise to at least 50,000 tons a year within three years. A quirk in how China calculates quotas means that two tons of quota must be used to export a ton of rare earths for some alloys.

The ministry also said that one company previously receiving quotas, not identified as foreign or domestic, had temporarily lost its rights to quotas because it was replacing equipment.

中国明年将削减稀土出口

Beijing imposes curb on rare earth export quotas

China will cut rare earth exports next year, a move that heightens global concerns over the country’s near-monopoly on production of the minerals.

中国明年将削减稀土出口，此举加剧了国际社会对中国近乎垄断稀土生产的担心。

The commerce ministry announced a 2011 first round of 14,446 tonnes of rare earth export quotas, 4.5 per cent down on last year on an annualised basis.

中国商务部公布了2011年第一批稀土出口配额，总计14446吨，折合成年率较上年减少了4.5%。

The lower quota will contribute to a tightening market for rare earths, a group of 17 elements crucial for products including BlackBerry devices, wind turbines and guided missiles.

配额的减少将导致稀土市场日益吃紧。稀土是17种元素的统称，是从黑莓(BlackBerry)、风力涡轮机到导弹等各类产品的关键原料。

China, which produces 97 per cent of global rare earths, has reduced exports repeatedly over several years, sending prices higher and prompting a rush of investment in rare earth mines outside China.

中国稀土产量占全球97%。几年来，中国已多次削减稀土出口，导致价格不断走高，促使人们纷纷出手投资中国以外的稀土矿。

The US trade representative office said last week it was continuing an investigation into whether China’s rare earths export policies constituted a violation of its commitments to the World Trade Organisation. Beijing’s curbs have also prompted outcries from Japan and Europe.

While the new quota is significantly lower than the quotas issued for the first half of 2010, it is higher than the quota that was issued for the second half of the year.

虽然新配额明显低于2010年上半年的配额，但却高于下半年的配额。

The government has long maintained that export restrictions are essential to combat illegal mining and environmental degradation.

中国政府长期以来一直坚称，出口限制措施对于整治非法开采和环境退化是不可或缺的。

“[These quota levels] are part of a unified effort to govern the sector that includes better environmental regulations, better mining regulations, and measures on all fronts,” said Niu Jingkao, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Society for Rare Earths.

Industry executives were disappointed the ministry did not make provisions to differentiate between some light rare earths, which are common and relatively cheap, and the more expensive heavy rare earths.

令业内高管感到失望的是，商务部没有制定相关条款，将一些常见且相对廉价的轻稀土与更为昂贵的重稀土区别对待。

Separately, Wang Caifeng, an ex-government official, said on the sidelines of an industry conference that an association representing China’s rare earth miners could be formed as early as May.

鸿海12亿美元洽购日立显示器业务

Taiwan’s Hon Hai in talks on $1.2bn Hitachi flat-screen deal

Hon Hai is in talks to acquire a majority stake in Hitachi’s flat-panel display business in a deal worth $1.2bn, say people familiar with the negotiations.

知情人士透露，台湾鸿海(Hon Hai)正在谈判收购日立(Hitachi)平板显示器业务的多数股份，交易金额价值12亿美元。

The acquisition would take the Taiwanese group to the top tier of producers of small and medium-sized liquid crystal display panels with an equal or slightly bigger market share than Sharp, the current leader.

通过此次收购，鸿海将跻身中小尺寸液晶平板显示器顶级制造商的行列，市场占有率将等于或略大于目前的领跑者夏普(Sharp)。

Hon Hai is already the biggest contract electronics maker but the move could see it produce screens for mobile devices and tablets in Japan, and bolster its ability to make advanced components for smartphones and computers such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad. It is the largest maker of Apple devices but faces increasing competition for the assembly contracts.

Hitachi Display, in which Hon Hai wants to invest, is a lossmaking venture between Hitachi, which owns 75 per cent, and Canon. Since combining their display operations in 2005, the two groups have been unable to turn a profit, a failure blamed on a lack of scale.

Hitachi Display’s biggest customers are Japanese mobile phone makers, which make almost no sales outside Japan.

日立显示器最大的客户是日本移动电话制造商，它们的产品几乎不在日本之外销售。

The company controls desirable technology, not least its IPS screens, which are clear even when viewed at oblique angles.

日立显示器还拥有令人青睐的技术，尤其是其IPS显示屏——即使从倾斜角度观看该显示屏，画面依然清晰。

Hon Hai, part of the Foxconn group, has bought two tele- vision factories from Sony outside Japan – in Slovakia and Mexico – but the Hitachi Display acquisition would be its first big foray into the country that long dominated consumer electronics production.

Most new manufacturing capacity for large-size LCD panels used in TV sets is being built in China, the world’s largest market for flat-panel TV sets. But Japan has the edge in more intricate small panels, say industry insiders said.

Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported that Hon Hai would pay Y100bn ($1.2bn) for a controlling stake. The funds would add a second plant to Hitachi Display’s LCD factory north of Tokyo, which would begin production in 2012, it said.

2010年12月26日 星期日

Toshiba Corp. will construct a plant for medium- and small-size liquid crystal panels with Apple Inc. for use in smartphones, part of a larger series of moves to reorganize and refocus its operations for electronics components.

Sources said Friday the plant will be built in Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, on a 100,000-square meter plot belonging to a Toshiba subsidiary.

Toshiba and Apple are together expected to invest more than 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) in the plant. Construction is slated to start in March with operations set to begin in April 2012.

The plant will employ about 250 people and focus on producing liquid crystal panels for use in the ever-popular iPhone, according to sources.

They said that Apple sounded out Toshiba about increasing production after it faced a chronic shortage of panels capable of providing high-resolution images and handling multiple functions.

Toshiba had to scale back its domestic production of small- and medium-sized panels following a drop in demand with the global economic downturn triggered by the collapse of the brokerage firm Lehman Brothers in 2008.

According to the sources, Apple will shoulder a three-quarters share of the investment burden, while Toshiba will cover the remainder.

Apple, which pioneered the smartphone market, is rapidly starting to feel the heat from rival products using Google's operation software.

To stay ahead of its competitors in the market, Apple concluded it that it was vital to secure a steady supply of key components and approached Sharp Corp. as well as Toshiba.

Sharp is also said to be mulling a boost of production with support from Apple.

Meantime, Toshiba unfurled its plan for reorganizing its production of large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs) used in TVs and household appliances, which includes outsourcing production to multiple outside companies, among them South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co.

Samsung is now maneuvering to gain supremacy in the production of flash-memory chips, which is Toshiba's mainstay. Fierce competition from the South Korean manufacturer was said to have forced Toshiba to withdraw from production of another line of chips in the past, namely DRAMs.

Despite their rivalry, the partnership is part of a trend in the industry to divvy up labor among competitors.

Another key move under Toshiba's reorganization plan is its plan to sell off its semiconductor production facility in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture, to Sony Corp for about 50 billion yen.

The moves are meant to lighten the burden created by production facilities for non-mainstay semiconductors and refocusing resources on growth areas.

Toshiba hopes to focus its energies on flash-memory chips, which are in much demand for use in smartphones and other handsets.

Toshiba has already begun construction of a production facility at its Yokkaichi plant in Mie Prefecture, with plans for production to start in July 2011.

2010年12月13日 星期一

SAN FRANCISCO — IBM is helping cities worldwide get "smarter" about using resources in ways that are good for the Earth as well as local budgets.

IBM announced that the coastal Texas town of Corpus Christi has joined cities such as London, Sydney, Stockholm, and Amsterdam in using Internet Age tools to better manage water, trash, parks and more.

"Look at the way the planet is evolving in terms of demographics and environmental considerations," said Guruduth Banavar, chief technology officer of global public sector efforts at IBM.

"It is pretty easy to see that we need to do some things dramatically differently."

Urbanization and climbing population are putting stress on the environment, and problems are exacerbated by inefficient uses of energy, water and land.

Technology can glean information about pipes, streets, parks, traffic and other once "dumb" parts of cities to effectively target solutions and, in some cases, fix things before they break, according to Banavar.

"There is a lot of information available to us through technology that is not being put to use very well," he said.

New York State based IBM and rivals such as Siemens in Germany and Cisco in California are providing systems that collect, share, analyze and act on data from historically "dumb" things in communities.

Banavar used the example of Corpus Christi, which went from tracking city work crews and projects on paper and index cards to getting real-time feedback and analytics regarding roads, buildings and more electronically.

"Now, they have information to say why problems occur, where they are and what can be done to prevent them," Banavar said. "At the end of the day, it is all about managing information to improve operations."

IBM software is being used in Corpus Christi to manage wastewater treatment plants, reservoirs, approximately 1,250 miles (2,012 kilometers) of wastewater mains and a water treatment plant that can hold 170 million gallons (643,520 cubic meters).

The system is relied on to provide water to the city's more than 280,000 residents.

Tracking of water pipe repairs revealed that nearly a third of the problems were at 1.4 percent of the sites served. Plans were put in place to fix underlying problems and cut ongoing repair costs.

Data analysis also showed that small pipes accounted for a disproportionate number of water main breaks, prompting a switch to larger pipes to avoid future troubles.

Skills of repair crew members are automatically factored into scheduling jobs.

Corpus Christi is going to use sensors in its trash collection program to improve recycling and handling of waste.

"We want to use information to make the planet a better place," Banavar said. "We can start solving these problems on the city level, then start connecting cities and scale out across the whole planet."

Cities can have a more selfish motivation in that better using resources means doing more with tight budgets.

"Corpus Christi is evolving into a more sustainable city," said city administrative superintendent Steve Klepper.

"We have the real-time status of city services, automated work orders and an overview of city's infrastructure to better manage our resources, as well as better maintain the city's mission-critical assets."

大量制鞋业务从中国流向印尼

Collective Brands targets Indonesia

US footwear group Collective Brands, which owns the Payless shoe stores chain, will open 15 franchised stores in Indonesia next year and is shifting a chunk of production away from China to south-east Asia’s largest economy, executives said.

The stores are part of a big push by foreign companies, including Unilever, Nestlé and Toyota, to target Indonesia’s growing middle class, while the expansion of production reflects the strong rebound of the manufacturing sector after a decade of decline.

Collective Brands has begun sourcing from Indonesian producers to reduce dependence on China, where costs are rising. Matt Rubel, chief executive, said the company expected steadily to raise output from subcontractors in Indonesia to about 12m pairs a year by 2015. “The utopia for one-stop sourcing for quality and low price has been China . . . but utopias never last,” Mr Rubel told the Financial Times in an interview. “Today we have to do more work in redeploying to wherever we can.”

With China’s share of output currently about 80 per cent, Mr Rubel said he expected that to fall to about 70 per cent over the next two years, and then to about 60 per cent. Collective Brands sold nearly 170m pairs of shoes in 2009, with revenues of $3.3bn.

Nike, the world’s largest shoe brand company, has divided production among China, Vietnam and Indonesia since the 1990s. But China’s share has also edged down over the past three years, with Vietnam now accounting for 37 per cent of its sales, China 34 per cent and Indonesia 21 per cent.

New Balance and Adidas also source millions of pairs of shoes from Indonesia every year. Moves such as Collective Brands’ could help the country surpass Vietnam this year as the world’s second-largest shoe manufacturer after China.

New Balance和阿迪达斯(Adidas)每年也从印尼采购数百万双鞋。像Collective Brands这样的举动有可能够帮助印尼在今年超过越南，成为仅次于中国的世界第二大制鞋国。

Collective Brands, which operates 4,500 Payless stores in the US, reached a franchise agreement with PT Mitra Adiperkasa in October. The first Indonesian businesses will open in the second quarter of 2011 in Jakarta and Denpasar, Bali, according to corporate secretary Fetty Kwartati. Stores are also planned in Malaysia and Singapore.

After being virtually wiped out by the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, Indonesia’s manufacturers are bouncing back, with the economy growing at 6 per cent. Shoe production is back at pre-crisis levels. In 2010, Indonesia is expected to make 300m pairs worth $2bn-$2.5bn, said Gita Wirjawan, head of the investment co-ordination board.

But Indonesia’s production surge is not limited to shoes. Leading food and household product makers are aggressively ramping up in the country. Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer products group, will invest more than $400m by 2013.

但印尼产量大幅飙升的不只是鞋。各大食品和家居用品制造商也在印尼积极扩张。到2013年，英荷消费品集团联合利华的投资将超过4亿美元。

Nestlé of Switzerland is pouring $200m into Indonesian facilities this year.

瑞士的雀巢今年在印尼投资2亿美元建厂。

Astra International, which has roughly 50 per cent of the domestic car and motorbike market, will spend approximately $200m in 2010 and 2011.